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Get 10% off my LitReactor online writing class on how to write fast-paced novels, Runaway Prose, or any other LitReactor class, if you register by Sunday and use the discount code NEWYEAR2019!

And remember, online writing classes make perfect belated Christmas gifts for those budding writers in your life who swore they would start their novels in the New Year!

Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

We all know about werewolves from the movies, but in this lively, poignant powerhouse of a novel, Stephen Graham Jones gives us a glimpse of what they might be like if they existed in the real world. It’s hard for me to find the right words to properly describe how much I love MONGRELS. So much more than a werewolf novel, it’s a peek into a subculture that is at once both recognizably human and exotically supernatural. Our young narrator wants very much to be a werewolf like his aunt, uncle, and grandfather, but so much of the novel is about all the dumb, mundane things that can go wrong for werewolves that you can’t help but feel sympathy for them. (Some of the best parts of the novel have to do with the new rules Jones invents for werewolves, which lends the well-worn trope an air of freshness and, at times, added piquancy.)

The prose is exquisite. Each chapter reads almost like a perfect short story. The characters are so well drawn and relatable that you feel like you know them as soon as you’re introduced; like you’re part of the narrator’s family, moving with them from state to state, never staying long enough to put down roots because that’s the way it is for werewolves. Well worthy of all its award nominations, MONGRELS is truly one of the best novels I’ve read. It’s a genuine masterpiece.

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The kind folks at Killer Nashville asked me to write an article for their website. I wrote a piece called “Adding a Supernatural Element to Your Thriller,” and now it’s live! Click the excerpt below to read the whole thing:

Growing up, I was a Monster Kid through and through. One of my favorite memories from my youth is how every Sunday morning at 11 AM, WPIX-TV out of New York City would show an old, black-and-white Abbott and Costello movie. It seemed like they showed every film the comedy duo ever made, and week after week I watched and laughed along with their classic mix of physical comedy and wordplay. I enjoyed all the films, but my true, whole-hearted devotion was reserved for the movies in which Bud Abbott and Lou Costello encountered monsters, haunted houses, and mad scientists, movies like Hold That Ghost, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott, and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, and of course their greatest film and one of my all-time favorite movies, the incomparable Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

I am delighted to announce that my story “Coriander for the Hidden” will appear in Interzone issue 280, which will be out in March of 2019! This is another long-time career goal finally achieved!

Some of you may have heard me read “Coriander” at the NYRSF reading series earlier this year. For the rest of you, it will be brand new!

I’ll be sure to let you know when the issue is available.